A Beacon of Hope

Anna May Wong

Hello and welcome to another edition of Popped, a journey through cinema history and culture. It’s great to have you here again and if you’re new, thank you for joining! Remember there is an audio version of this above if you would prefer.

This week, I am finally getting back to a series of stories about the women who made waves during the golden age of silent movies and beyond.

With it being the Lunar New Year this weekend, it’s a perfect time to celebrate the story of an Asian American whose legacy and stance inspired future generations. I want to tell you the story of the first American Asian star of the silver screen, Anna May Wong. More well known in the US than in the UK, I found her story fascinating.

Happy new year to those that celebrate!

“For all the little boys and girls who look like me watching tonight, this is a beacon of hope...”

Michelle Yeoh, The Oscars, 2023

In 1882, The Chinese Exclusion Act barred the immigration of Chinese labourers for ten years. It was the first time the US had made a law against travel for a specific national group.

Daughter of second generation immigrants, Anna May Wong was born in 1905, and grew up during the hangover of this ill-will toward Chinese Americans. They lived in a community in LA, close to China Town where film making was rife during its infancy.

As a child, Wong would leave school early and wander around the film sets close to her home so that she could see movies being made. She had a goal…to be part of the new world of movie making.

But what opportunities did she have?

Asian characters were often a housemaid or an evil seductress and those parts were mostly given to white people in yellow face.

Anna May Wong had to make her own luck. She wanted to play Asian roles of substance, and take opportunities that would break the stereotype.

Anna Mae Wong - Toll of the Sea - 1922

Her first film was Toll of the Sea in 1922. I watched this last week and Anna May Wong truly stands out. What is supposed to be a story of American superiority, ends up being a tragic tale of a woman losing everyone she loves. It’s her portrayal that changes this reading, to my modern eye at least.

Within two years Wong had become a well known face in Hollywood. But the roles that welcomed her were not the roles she wanted.

She couldn’t become a leading lady in her own right, as inter-racial kissing was forbidden on screen and so she could never be a true love interest. Over and over again she was offered either a doomed love interest or a deceitful “dragon lady’,

“I was so tired of the parts I had to play. Why is it that the screen Chinese is nearly always the villain of the piece, and so cruel a villain--murderous, treacherous, a snake in the grass. We are not like that. How should we be, with a civilization that’s so many times older than that of the West. We have our own virtues. We have our rigid code of behavior, of honor. Why do they never show these on the screen? Why should we always scheme, rob, kill?” - Anna May Wong

The odds were stacked against her. So what did she do?

She moved to Europe!

Studios across Europe, especially Germany, were offering Anna May Wong leading roles that had nuance and something to say. For this newsletter I watched Piccadilly, a British film released in 1929. It’s honestly one of the best silent films I've seen. It’s full of life, superbly shot and well worth watching. Again Wong’s acting in this picture is ahead of its time. She always plays the character, and not the stereotype.

Wong returned to the US in 1930 with the promise of leading roles that were not forthcoming. The most piercing was 1934’s The Good Earth where the Chinese leading character went to the white actress, Luise Rainer, who was made up in yellow face. Rainer won an Oscar for best actress for the film.

I love Wong’s defiance toward the studios. When MGM offered a test for another role, she said

“I’ll be glad to take the test, but I won’t play the part. If you let me play O-lan, I’ll be very glad. But you’re asking me--with Chinese blood--to do the only unsympathetic role in the picture, featuring an all-American cast portraying Chinese characters.”

In 1936 she visited China for the first time, visited her Father who had moved there, and created a documentary. When she returned to the US she continued to make movies and then retired from the screen during WWII. She spent time on stage, and lead a policitcal life, and was the first Asian American to have her own episodic television show. She returned to the silver screen later in life and passed away in 1961 at the age of 56.

When Michelle Yeoh called her Oscar win a ‘beacon of hope’ in 2023, it was over a century after Anna May Wong made her screen debut. If Yeoh’s beacon was for representation on the big stage, then Anna May Wong provided hope for actors like her to play human Asian characters and not settle for anything less. She was a spellbinding actor, a fashion icon, and always moving forward, keeping her honour to the last.

Further Watching

Toll of the Sea (55 Mins) - Youtube

Piccadilly (£3.50 to rent) - BFI

Anna May Wong - Beyond the Icon - A Conversation on Youtube

Thanks so much for reading! If you enjoyed this please to share it with people you think may be interested, or on Notes if you use Substack. It really helps grow my audience!

Until next time.

Gareth